This was around nine o’clock. Martha had just arrived at the Skakels’ with Helen Ix and Geoff Byrne. Michael threw in Littleton. “I remember standing in the kitchen drinking with Littleton and telling him that I thought Martha was really pretty.
“‘Yeah, she’s hot!’ he [Littleton] said.
“You should meet this girl,” Michael replied. “She’s a schmoke” (a term for someone who is loose).
Yes, that’s what Michael was doing, Frank was certain. He was setting Littleton up. Michael was suggesting Littleton had lost control of himself and killed her. That had been another of Jack Solomon’s insane theories. “What had the Skakel kids told Littleton about Martha?” Jack often said. “What had they said to make Kenny think he could score with her?”
When Solomon wanted Sheridan’s help in pursuing Littleton, he had no doubt passed that thought along to the lawyer, who had probably repeated it to his client, Michael.
But Littleton wasn’t the only one Michael tried to implicate. He also threw in the family handyman, Franz Wittine, who lived in a guest room in the basement. “We were in the kitchen and I remember going, ‘Oh, where’s Franz?’ We called him Frank. It was only like eight o’clock at night and I remember walking down to the basement going, ‘Frank, Frank,’ and all the lights were off. So I went back upstairs and I was like, ‘Where’s Frank? You guys seen Frank? I can’t find Frank.’” Again, a lie. If Franz Wittine were lying on the kitchen floor choking, Michael would have stepped over him without stopping, Frank thought. That was how much concern Michael had for Franz Wittine. And here was Michael saying he was interested in Wittine’s whereabouts. Frank almost laughed out loud.
Michael’s thoughts drifted back to Martha. He saw her from the window, standing apart from the others. “I think I said let’s get in the car and smoke cigarettes,” Frank heard him say on the tape. Here it comes, Frank thought. He wondered if Michael was going to discuss his feelings about Martha. He prayed Michael would.
“She and I were in the front seat of my father’s Lincoln,” Frank heard him say. “We were in the front seat talking. I was telling her that she should come over to the Terriens’, Terriens’ is great, it’s so much fun, we go watch the show, Monty Python. She said, ‘I can’t. My mom said that I have to be in by nine. She gave me a curfew and she’ll be mad.’ I said like ‘Screw your mom, come on,’ and she said, ‘Okay, great.’ I said, ‘Yeah, we’ll trash the town, tomorrow night. We’ll go egg the cop booth.’”
As Frank listened, he read along in the manuscript, hoping, praying that Michael would divulge more of his feelings toward Martha. “I really liked her,” Michael said. “I wanted her to be my girlfriend but I was going slow, being careful. The truth is that with Martha I felt a little shy. I thought that maybe if we spent the evening together at my cousin’s, something romantic might develop.”
“Then she touched me on the shoulder. ‘Tomorrow night, though, okay?’
“‘Tomorrow night,’ she’d said. She’d touched me. It was a promise. I nearly swooned with joy.
“‘We’ll go nuts and trash this town,’ she said and smiled.
“‘Great!’ To try and get a kiss then would have ruined everything,” Michael said. “Tomorrow night, I thought. Tomorrow night I’ll kiss her.” But Frank didn’t believe it. He wondered whether Michael was telling another lie. If she had made the promise at all, could it have been for later that night? Yes, that was Mischief Night, Doorbell Night. That was when you rang doorbells and threw eggs. That was the night you trashed the town. Not, as Michael was saying, the next night, Halloween. The thought crossed Frank’s mind: Could Martha have gone home, then come back out?
Martha got out of the Lincoln. Rush and Jimmy got in and sat in the front seat, Michael and Johnny in the back. “I said good-bye to Martha,” Michael said on the tape. “It was like my brother Tommy, Helen Ix, I think Jackie Wetenhall and Marjorie Walker and Geoffrey Byrne at the back door of our house. I said good-bye to those guys, we’ll see you tomorrow.” Okay, Frank thought, so Michael was leaving Martha and Tommy.
“We spinned off to Terrien’s, which was like fifteen, twenty miles away. Jimmy was driving the car, ’cause he always liked to race. He always liked to time himself how fast he could get to my house. He was driving through all the lights, driving like a maniac.” That, Frank told himself, was probably the truth.
“At Terrien’s,” Michael continued, “you never had to worry about anything because his stepfather [George Terrien] was a drunk. And he was always away in New York, living at the New York Athletic Club or shacking up with his latest mistress. My aunt Georgeann was also drunk all the time and pretty much kept to her own wing of the house. They had a huge, castle-like place. You could do anything. We never got bothered. I felt at home there. Like my father couldn’t get me. My brothers couldn’t get me. And my brother Tommy couldn’t give me a hard time there.” Again, Frank thought, that was probably the truth.
“We smoked a lot of pot,” Michael continued, “and drank some more and laughed through the whole Python show. Afterward, I wandered off to my older cousin Johnny’s room.” Another nut, thought Frank: Johnny had beaten up George Terrien, his alcoholic stepfather. God, what a family.
Michael continued that Johnny Terrien “was away somewhere. His room was a kid’s fantasy. It was the like the biggest single person’s bedroom you’d ever seen, so big it had a balcony and oval section with about twenty windows that looked out over a meadow and an orchard. He had a king-size bed with two life-size statues of palace guards, the Beefeaters, on either side, from what’s that big palace in London? With the big hats on their head?”
Buckingham Palace, you moron, Frank thought. Frank heard Hoffman, the ghostwriter, in the background on the tape answering the same thing, “From Buckingham Palace.”
Frank returned to the manuscript. “I lay on the bed, flanked by the stalwart Beefeaters, thinking of Martha,” Michael went on. “I loved this room. I was sleepy with booze and pot. I wanted to fall asleep. I wanted to stay the night but how would I get back the next day? And the next day would become tomorrow night and I would see Martha. I roused myself.”
So he wanted to go back and see Martha. Again, Frank wondered whether that promise Michael said she had made to meet him tomorrow night wasn’t actually for later that night.
“My brother Rush decided to drive us home,” the tape continued. “He was really hammered. Johnny, David, and I all rode in the back seat ’cause he was so drunk. We got out of the Terriens’ driveway and on up to the end of Cliffdale Road, about half a mile. Then we turned into Riversville Road but after about 300 yards, Rush pulled over, put the car in park, and fell asleep. Johnny took the wheel even though he didn’t have a license. He managed to get us home.” What a family of drunks, Frank thought.
“No one was around. All the lights, most of the lights, were out. And I went walking around the house. Nobody was on the porch. I went upstairs to my sister’s (Julie’s) room. Her door was closed and I remembered Andrea had gone home.” Yet another lie, Frank thought. He goes to Julie’s room? Why would he do that? Julie is scared to death of him. He’s thinking about Andrea? Hell, he’s just making that up.
“I wandered into the master bedroom. There was nobody there. The TV was on but nobody was there.” Ah, so that was it. Littleton had slept in the master bedroom the night he moved in because Rushton Sr. was away on his hunting trip. Michael was supposedly wandering around the house and happened to notice Littleton was not where he was supposed to be sleeping? No, Michael was trying to implicate him.
“I walked around and nobody was around and I went to the kitchen and got something to eat,” Michael continued. “Then I went upstairs to bed.”
But he couldn’t settle down and go to sleep. “I know part of me wanted to go to sleep and then another part of me was—got horny. And I kept thinking about this lady on Walsh Lane.” Yet another lie, thought Frank. He wasn’t looking for a mom on Walsh Lane. Frank was certain Michael wa
s thinking of Martha.
In the manuscript, Michael had written: “I was so ashamed. The thing I never told the police is that I did used to go and look in women’s windows. And a lot was at my friend’s mom. It wasn’t sexual. I just wanted to be loved. I just wanted somebody to hold me. I was just looking for a mom.” Frank didn’t believe any of it.
“I decided, ‘Fuck it. I’m going back out.’ And I snuck out the back door.” Well, that was probably one of the few things Michael said that was true, Frank decided. Here we go.
“But it was dark outside, and I’m scared of the dark.” Another lie. Michael was used to being out at night. The Sutton report had concluded the killer was a night-crawler, someone familiar with the dark and also maybe a neighbor. Someone whom Martha knew because there were no defense wounds. She had not been afraid of him.
All this went through Frank’s mind as he listened. He felt that for the first time he was seeing the face of the killer he’d always imagined. For years he had thought of this poor girl lying out there in the darkness. He could visualize her, see her running with her long blonde hair, trying to escape, being hit with the golf club, stumbling, trying to get up, falling. And he could see this figure, with his back to him, beating her, stabbing her through the neck with the golf club, pulling her pants down. Always, he saw the back of the killer. He had never been able to see his face. Until now.
As he listened to the tape, it was as though the killer had stopped, then turned around and stared at him. For the first time, Frank could see that person was Michael.
“I remember running past the pool, up Walsh Lane, stopping at the Ixes’ house. Usually, their dog would chase you. And I remember getting into a full run, running past their house. And it was dark on Walsh Lane. And the dog didn’t bark. And I just ran to that lady’s house and it was like spying in her window and hoping to see her naked.”
Sure, thought Frank. He was just looking for a mom. Which psychiatrist had used that line to explain Michael’s craziness, his wildness, his drunkenness, his violence, his waking up in women’s clothing, and God only knows what else? Michael wanted to see this woman naked? He was just looking for a mom? Who was he kidding?
“And I was kind of drunk and I couldn’t get it up.” Another lie, Frank thought, since a few minutes ago he’d said he was horny. “Why should I do this?” Michael continued, referring to the lady on Walsh Lane. “Martha likes me. I’ll go get a kiss from Martha. I’ll be bold tonight. You know, the booze gave me courage again.” Okay, Frank thought, now we probably are getting a little closer to the truth.
“So I went over to their [the Moxleys’] house. I ran up the front [porch] stairs. They have huge front stairs. And I remember climbing up, seeing the light was on like the second or third floor. They had these huge cedar trees, pine trees, right at the front door and I remember climbing up ’em, like way up there.”
A lie again. Those trees couldn’t hold a cat. After my articles on the Sutton report, Frank had stopped by the Moxley house to see the tree Michael said he’d climbed. He was surprised to find there was only one tree by Martha’s window and it wasn’t large enough to hold a person at that level.
Frank had checked with Dorthy. Perhaps, he thought, there had been another tree at the time of Martha’s murder that was later cut down. Dorthy sent him a photograph of the house in 1975. There was only that one tree. Dorthy said only a monkey could climb it. Michael may well have climbed a tree and masturbated in it but it wasn’t the tree outside Martha’s window.
“And I think I threw rocks or sticks at the window and I was yelling her name and I find out later on that wasn’t her window, that was her brother’s window.” Except, Frank thought, that was not the story he had told Michael Meredith. He had told Meredith he had seen Martha through the window in the shower. And the tree outside John Moxley’s window was so thin it couldn’t have been climbed either.
“I’m a little out of my mind because I am drunk or high,” Michael went on. “I pulled my pants down. I masturbated for thirty seconds in the tree and I said, ‘This is crazy. If they catch me, they’re going to think I’m nuts.’”
Except that Michael had told Krebs he had masturbated to orgasm. This was just another inconsistency in his lie. The masturbating story has to go in here because of whatever DNA Michael thought he may have left behind.
“A moment of clarity came into my head and I climbed down the tree. They had a half-oval driveway and I started—it would be a direct route from their front door to our house.” My God, Frank thought to himself: He is describing the site of the first attack.
“I started to cut through the oval but it’s really dark and when I started walking through, something in me said ‘Don’t go in the dark over there.’ But I went under the streetlight and I remember yelling, ‘Who’s in there?’ and chucking rocks, saying, ‘Come on motherfucker, I’ll kick your ass.’”
So, thought Frank, he is yet again placing himself at the crime scene—presumably while the murder is occurring. He is challenging the killer and throwing rocks with the same motion as he would swing the golf club. He has put himself under a streetlight just in case anyone sees so he can explain away his actions and his movements.
“And I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God. I hope to God nobody saw me jerking off. And then I remember running home and thinking I was gonna tell Andy Pugh that I thought I saw somebody there that night.” The same Andy Pugh who had told Frank that the tree in which Michael claimed to have masturbated was “The Tree,” where Martha’s body was found.
“And then I went to sleep. Then I woke up to Mrs. Moxley saying ‘Michael, have you seen Martha?’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ And I was still high from the night before, a little drunk, then I was like, ‘What, oh my God, did they see me last night?’”
What Michael meant, Frank was convinced, was “Did they see what I did to Martha last night?”
“And I remember just having a feeling of panic like my worry of what I went to bed with. Like, I don’t know. I just had a feeling of panic.” Was that, too, a clue? Frank wondered. Could Michael be referring to the missing golf club shaft?
“Police cars were going down Walsh Lane and they found Martha. And like the second place where I was yelling in, that’s where they said she was hit and dragged all the way back there. And I’m thinking, ‘My God, if I tell anybody that I was out that night they’re gonna say I did it.’”
You’re goddamn right, Mike, Frank said to himself. You’re goddamn right they will.
•
Before dawn that Sunday morning, my phone rang. I staggered to answer it. It was Frank. “I’m sorry to call you so late but there is something I want you to know.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, looking frantically around and discovering it was 3:00 A.M.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about that. I just wanted you to know that I can’t give you any details now, but you are going to love it when I tell you what I just found out.”
“This is why you woke me up at 3:00 A.M., to tell me something you’re not going to tell me?”
“Just trust me, Len, you’re not going to be disappointed.”
The prosecution team on the Skakel case (left to right): Frank Garr, lead investigator; Chris Morano and Susan Gill, assistant state’s attorneys; and Jonathan Benedict, chief state’s attorney.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Moment of Triumph
CONNECTICUT
May 1998–January 2002
The grand jury sat for eighteen months before Superior Court Judge George Thim. Over fifty witnesses were called. They included John Higgins, Chuck Seigan, and dozens of others from Elan as well as Richard Hoffman, Andy Pugh, Cissy Ix, Andrea Shakespeare, and Father Connolly.
I drove up to Brideport to see Frank during that time. He was a different person from the one I’d visited the year before. He was smiling. Colleagues were talking to him. And he was no longer hiding out in his office. He led me down the corridors to show me the compl
ex. He even introduced me to Jonathan Benedict.
“I had no doubt that with the information I presented in my affidavit there was enough for an arrest warrant,” Frank said to me years later. “I had no doubt the grand jury would find probable cause to indict.”
But at the time the grand jury sat, he was more circumspect. Since the hearings were secret, he couldn’t tell me much about it. He couldn’t even tell me who appeared before it.
Except for one person he had no hesitation in talking about. His name was Tad Baldwin. In the midst of the grand jury he had called Frank, claiming to have information about Martha’s murder. Baldwin told Frank he was in Belle Haven that Halloween eve with the brother of a girl he was seeing.
Baldwin said the brother had been on acid that night. Baldwin had lost sight of him and when he caught up with him later on Walsh Lane, Baldwin said he admitted killing Martha Moxley.
“I just made an angel,” Baldwin quoted him as having said.
“I wasted six weeks chasing it down,” said Frank. “I went through everyone who knew this guy and knocked it down. There was nothing to it. Everyone I spoke to who knew him said he wasn’t there that night. Baldwin had made it all up.”
Over the years, people had come forward with cockamamie stories about the case. Jack Solomon had told him he had the wrong guy. Mark Fuhrman and Dominick Dunne had said he had not known what to do with their information. Now here was someone saying that he had known about the killer for 20 years and never came forward.
Here in the home stretch with the grand jury sitting, Frank snapped. He was so angry at Baldwin he subpoenaed him before the grand jury. There was no law against lying to a police officer like Frank. But if Baldwin lied before the grand jury, he could be arrested for perjury.
Baldwin testified he’d never spoken definitively and that Frank had misunderstood him. The grand jury didn’t indict him, which only made Frank angrier.
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